Sea Shepherd's Watson on Interpol's wanted list

Interpol has placed the head of anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, Paul Watson, on its international wanted list.

The request to place him on the list was issued by Japan.

Interpol has issued a so-called blue notice, asking national police forces to pass on information about Mr Watson's whereabouts and activities.

But it has not issued a notice requesting his arrest.

The Sea Shepherd leader has harassed the Japanese whaling fleet for the past few years, limiting the number of whales caught for so-called scientific research.

Mr Watson, who is in the United States, says the notice does not make any sense.

"It's a blue notice which means it's not an arrest warrant, it's just so they can keep tabs on me. But they needn't have wasted their time, they could have just followed our website," he said.

"One thing that it does mean to me is that we're certainly getting to them. We cut their kill quotas in half and they're really desperate that we not go back down there this year.

"But I can tell them we'll certainly be back down in the Southern Ocean harassing them again in December."

Despite international condemnation, Japan hunts whales under a loophole in a global moratorium.

Fewer than 5 per cent of Japanese admit to even eating whale meat.

New Zealand anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune appeared in a Tokyo court last month on five charges related to his boarding of a Japanese whaling ship in the Antarctic earlier this year.

Bethune has been charged with trespass, vandalism, obstructing commercial activity, being armed with a weapon and, most seriously, assault causing injury.

The assault charge stems from allegations Bethune threw tubs of rancid butter onto one of the whaling ships and in the process slightly injured a Japanese crewman.

He pleaded guilty to four of the charges but denied the assault.

If convicted he faces up to 15 years in jail.

The charges arose after Bethune tried to make a citizen's arrest on the whaling ship's captain and was also trying to serve him with a multi-million-dollar damage bill.

Meanwhile, Greenland's indigenous peoples have won the right to hunt 27 humpback whales, capping three years of acrimonious debate within the 88-nation International Whaling Commission (IWC).

The self-ruled Danish territory can now kill and consume nine of the giant marine mammals each year through 2012, with its existing quota of more than 200 minke and fin whales cut by the same number.

The decision - greeted with applause - came on the closing day of the IWC's annual meeting in Agadir, Morocco, where a big-tent compromise deal between pro- and anti-whaling nations collapsed earlier in the week.